The development of LOTR

“At one point Bob said: ‘So there’s these four hobbits, right? And, you know, they go on this adventure and none of the hobbits die?’ Well, no, we explained. Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin all survive . . . ‘Well, we can’t have that,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to kill a hobbit! I don’t care which one; you can pick — I’m not telling you who it should be: you pick out who you want to kill, but we’ve really got to kill one of those hobbits!’